


Numbers Station

by Okobogee



Series: Cause And Effect [2]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Not K-Pop Idols, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Bad Ending, Horror, M/M, One Shot, Sad Ending, Science Fiction, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 04:50:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20040199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Okobogee/pseuds/Okobogee
Summary: Seungcheol, Mingyu and Vernon offset the monotony of college studies by hunting for numbers stations. They finally pick up a signal, but what are the intentions of the person behind it?





	Numbers Station

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! You will notice that this piece ties into Artificial Love. You are not required to read it, but this will be significantly less fun for all of us if you don't.
> 
> I've actually been planning this from the moment I set out to write Artificial Love, and I'm very excited to finally post it!!
> 
> If you're unfamiliar with numbers stations, I suggest reading up on them a little bit, this might make more sense that way
> 
> As always, this is a piece of horror, it's not as scary as some of my other work but there's no happy ending and nothing good here. There's no graphic depictions of violence or sex, but a main character does die and in an upsetting way so, as always, I hope you keep that in mind before you start reading.
> 
> I'm also on [twitter](https://twitter.com/okobogee)! Come say hi!
> 
> A big thank you to Havokftw for helping me sort out my thoughts with this.

He’s sitting down next to Mingyu, just breathing. Listening. He closes his eyes for a few seconds, willing the low static in the background to break out into any other kind of sound.

Vernon pokes him, but seems pleased once he opens his eyes and looks up. 

_ Not asleep, just bored of seeing the same, empty darkness. _

They had agreed on turning off their electronics for stakeouts to minimize interference. It made their results more reliable but their trips more boring. Vernon always said he enjoyed the quiet, that it made him _ ‘feel one with the universe’ _, whatever that meant. But he wasn’t like that, he needed action. The way Vernon had described numbers stations to him a few years back really made him think this would be his way of finding some action, something interesting, something to interrupt the monotone routine he found himself trapped in. But here he is, in the middle of a field. Waiting. Looking ahead but not seeing anything in the darkness.

Mingyu’s dozing off now, and normally they’d poke him awake but exam week just ended and the poor boy needs all the rest he can get after the all-nighters he pulled. Vernon gets up and starts trodding closer to the edge of the woods with a flashlight, probably to take a piss. Seungcheol’s alone now, and a year ago it would’ve freaked him out but by now this too has become routine. 

Suddenly, there’s a break in the static, garbled music. At first he thinks the shortwave’s picking up a commercial radio station, but the sound gets clearer and the melody is childish, too simple to be something any station would play. It makes him think of the famous Lincolnshire Poacher.

  
He holds his breath as he fumbles with the old cassette recorder they have for the purpose of recording any possible transmissions they hear. As the melody of Hot Cross Buns winds down to an end, he waits for the clear sign of a number station: a coded message, perhaps morse code. It doesn’t come, all he hears is static again. He waits for a few beats before he turns the recorder off. 

Shortly after, Vernon returns.  
  
“Dude, you look spooked. Everything okay?”, he whispers.  
  
“I heard a tune on the radio”  
  
“Did you record it?”

Vernon scoots closer, Seungcheol can hear the excitement in his voice, despite him whispering.  
  
“Of course I did. It was just a song though, no message afterwards”  
  
“Can I listen?”  
  
The walkman is off Seungcheol’s hands before he’s had the chance to reply, and Vernon hastily sets the headphones over his ears. Seungcheol watches him, can just about make out the whites of Vernon’s eyes, they’re like saucers. Vernon plays the recording, rewinds, plays it again. After a few minutes he drops the headphones around his neck.  
  
“Woah. And to think I missed _ this _ because of my bladder! I think I’m gonna start peeing in bottles from now on”  
  
“Ugh, no, gross!”

“Should we wake Mingyu up?”  
  
“I think we should just let him sleep. What difference does it make if we tell him in the morning instead of now?”

* * *

“Woah. That’s kinda creepy”, is all Minghao says after the recording.  
  
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”  
  
“Well, we don’t know if it’s one of those stations you’re looking for. You said it yourself, there was no message or code afterwards. Don’t you also think it could be a prank? Or a fake?”  
  
“Come on, man, don’t piss on our parade! This is huge! This is the first transmission we’ve picked up that isn’t a commercial radio station”, Mingyu all but yells in his excitement.  
  
Minghao hums dismissively, but he looks pensive. Seungcheol chews on his sandwich quietly.

“Why don’t you come with us next weekend, Hao? Maybe hearing it yourself would make you less sceptic”  
  
“Eh, sure. Jun’s in China visiting his family, it’s not like I have anything better to do”

* * *

The nights are getting colder now, so instead of the field, Mingyu suggested they go to the empty lot at the edge of town so that they can safely light a bonfire to keep them warm but Seungcheol, surprising even himself, vehemently disagreed -- the Hot Cross Buns signal might not reach there. (They named the station Hot Cross Buns after the song it plays. It’s not very imaginative but hey, they’re not the ones to do that)  
That leaves them back at the field, huddled close together under a blanket. Mingyu gets out the thermos, pouring everyone a generous cup of coffee. Minghao’s mesmerized by the stars in the sky, they’re actually far enough from the city to see them.  
  
“God I wish you guys didn’t have the no electronics rule, you can’t catch these stars on a polaroid camera!”  
  
Mingyu nods, he’s the only other person who cares about photography.  
  
“Dude, I swear, when you hear HCB you’re not gonna give a fuck about the stars” 

It was as if the radio had heard them, because at that precise moment, the static cuts out sharply and they hear the familiar memory of Hot Cross Buns.  
  
Vernon doesn’t miss a beat as he presses the record button on his walkman and moves it closer to the radio receiver. They all hold their breath, waiting, hoping that after the melody fades, they’ll be able to hear a message of some kind. After the melody fades, they get static again, and their shoulders sag in disappointment. Vernon isn’t ready to give up though, and starts fiddling with the frequency. After a while, they start hearing the melody again, but this time it’s clearer. He looks back at the rest of them, with a facial expression that says “See? It works!”.  
  
The melody winds to and end again, but this time, instead of static, they start hearing beeping. Vernon furrows his eyebrows. Mingyu scrambles up quickly towards his backpack. He pulls out a notepad and a pen and starts scribbling. Seungcheol and Minghao exchange a confused look. The beeping cuts off suddenly after a few minutes, and they’re back to static again. When he’s certain the transmission has ended, Mingyu looks at them with wide eyes.  
  
“Guys, it’s morse code! Morse code! It’s legit! It’s a numbers station!”, he all but yells.

“That’s what you were scribbling down?”  
  
“Yeah! Although I now realize that I really didn’t need to. It’s the most common morse signal broadcasted around the world”

“The most common… You mean--?”  
  
“Yes! It’s a distress signal. SOS”  
  
“So someone’s for _ sure _ messing with us”, comes Minghao’s reply  
  
“We don’t know that! What if someone’s really in trouble?”, Mingyu counters  
  
Vernon looks at them thoughtfully.  
  
“Okay. Let’s think for a second. If this is a legit station, then we have found the first South Korean numbers station, right? And generally they’re believed to be run by the military, or secret government agencies, right?”

Minghao starts nodding vigorously and picks up from where Vernon left off.  
  
“So if we’ve really found a numbers station, this distress signal is coming from someone who’s in _ big _ trouble. We’re talking ‘The enemy has found me out’ trouble”  
  
“Okay but what on earth are _ we _ gonna do about that? We’re just college kids. And not even that, we’re _ geeks _ , we’re the outsiders, everyone thinks we’re weird. Do you think anyone would believe us if we brought this to the officials?”  
  
“Who said anything about the officials?” Vernon quips back. “We’re gonna keep this to ourselves, look into it and see what we can do about it”  
  
“ _ See what we can do about-- _ We’re not the Famous Five!”  
  
“Of course not, there’s only four of us. We need to bring Jun into it”, Minghao says, dead serious. Mingyu and Vernon nod along. Seungcheol sighs exasperatedly. 

* * *

Jun, as expected, gets very excited when he hears the recordings.

“This is great! Imagine how famous we’ll be when we tell everyone about this! We’ll get so much money”  
  
“Really, dude? That’s where your priorities lie?”  
  
“Okay but we could like, pay off our tuition loans before we even leave college”, Vernon points out and Mingyu and Minghao seem to agree.  
  
“How am _ I _ the voice of reason here?”  
  
“Don’t look at me, you’re the one who dragged me along in the first place!”, comes the indignant squawk from Mingyu.  
  
After some bickering back and forth, they start making plans. 

* * *

Being the most tech minded of the bunch, Seungcheol is tasked with locating the origin of the signal. In theory, it’s simple enough, just turn your antenna 360 degrees until you find the direction where the signal is the strongest. In practice however, it’s tedious. 

Luckily Seungcheol lives at the edge of town, so he’s technically the one closest to the signal. 

He’s been fiddling with the radio every night for a month now, but thus far he hasn’t been able to find the signal. Seungcheol has seriously been thinking about telling his friends to give up. He’s actually writing out a message to send to their group chat when the unthinkable happens. He hears Hot Cross Buns again. He sits up in his bed and stares at the radio receiver on his desk. For some reason the signal seems to be stronger than when they caught it on the field, the melody’s a lot louder for sure. 

He jumps up and digs around in his desk drawer, looking for his compass. He honestly should’ve had it on hand, but he was certain he wouldn’t catch anything.  
With his compass finally in hand, he starts taking a video on his phone, for evidence. He sets the compass down next to the antenna, hastily writes down that it’s pointing southeast. 

The transmission’s different tonight. There’s more morse code after the SOS signal, and he writes it down. Just in case.

**…. . .-.. .--. .-.. --- … -**

The morse code repeats a few times before the transmission ends again. Seungcheol grabs his phone with shaky hands and sends the video to his friends.

**[00:15] scoups: ** Video attachment  
**[00:15] scoups: ** I think the signal’s coming from the southeast  
**[00:20] vernon: ** am I tripping or is the transmission different?  
**[00:22] scoups: ** not tripping, there was more morse code  
**[00:25] mingyu:** ok it says…. help lost?????  
**[00:26] scoups:** this has to mean it’s not automatic. there’s a person there  
**[00:28] haohao**: guys, I don’t like this at ALL. 

**[00:29] scoups:** hao we have to help!  
**[00:29] haohao:** no we don’t  
**[00:30] haohao:** we don’t even know if whoever’s behind this is in real danger.  
**[00:32] haohao:** how would someone who’s lost have the equipment for sending out a transmission that has music and morse code? I doubt he has a fucking recorder with him just so he can play a funky lil tune before sending out a distress signal

**[00:32] junnie:** i agree w hao but I also want 2 kno whats goin on.

* * *

“Ugh I can’t believe I agreed to this”, Minghao mutters as they trek through the field they’ve grown so accustomed to sitting and waiting in.  
  
“I bet you’ll change your tone when we find the origin of the transmission and get to the bottom of this mystery”  
  
“There’s no mystery, Mingyu. I’ll bet you 10 000 won it’s just some bored neckbeard looking to mess with people”  
  
“Guys! Can you bicker a little more quietly, we’re trying to hear the transmission!”

Right at that moment, Hot Cross Buns comes on, and they all fall silent. Seungcheol fiddles with the equipment and starts turning around, hoping to get a stronger signal. He succeeds, and the needle of the compass points east, towards the edge of the field, where the treeline stops. They set off in that direction, Vernon at the front with this flashlight poised.  
As familiar as the field is, they’ve never actually ventured into the forest itself.  
The large camphor trees form a canopy so thick, that there’s barely any undergrowth, and they can barely glimpse at the stars. Stepping into the silence of the forest makes the hairs at the back of Seungcheol’s neck stand up -- it feels like he’s disturbing something ancient. 

It seems as if he’s the only one to feel this, seeing as his companions trudge along at the same pace. Mingyu looks excited, kind of like a puppy.

They must’ve been walking for hours now, and they’re all getting tired. Minghao suggests they set up camp and get some sleep. Bone-weary, they forego the tent and just lay down their little mats and crawl into their sleeping bags. The others fall asleep within minutes, but Seungcheol is bothered by the quietness, it’s unnatural. Shouldn’t he be able to hear the sounds of animals, the wind? It seems like the forest is a vacuum that sucks out all the sound in the world. He stares out, looking for a glimpse of the sky until dawn starts creeping in. 

Seungcheol’s woken up the next day by the sound of someone clanging things together and cursing under their breath. He cracks open his eyes and searches for the culprit.  
  
“What time is it?”, he croaks, voice still raspy with sleep.  
  
“It’s around noon, I think. My phone ran out of battery and the powerbank is somewhere in Hao’s stuff, so I can’t be certain”  
  
Seungcheol sits up, still cocooned in his sleeping bag and rummages around in his rucksack.  
  
“1:30 p.m”  
  
“Want some coffee? It’s instant, so it tastes like shit but it’s hot and it has caffeine in it”

So the clanging had been Mingyu setting up their travel cooker. Seungcheol nods, and draws his knees to his chest. He feels like a man-sized inchworm. 

“Where’s Vernon?”  
  
“Oh him and Minghao found a small lake nearby, they’re washing up”

* * *

After four days and three nights, they’re close enough to the source of the signal for there to be no static on the station. The transmission hasn’t changed during this time and Minghao suggests that maybe whoever was there is now gone, or maybe it was all fake all along.

Seungcheol and Jun are excited, though. They’re coming up with wilder and wilder theories, and despite Mingyu complaining that he’s hungry, they decide to keep going for a little while more.

Vernon’s the first one to spot it. There’s a radio mast in the distance.  
  
“Guys! Guys! Look!”

“It looks like a radio tower… Do you think that’s where the signal’s coming from?”  
  
“That’s gotta be it!”  
  
They hurry towards the mast in the horizon, and when they get to the base of it, there’s nothing there. Just the mast. Mingyu groans in exasperation, and sits heavily underneath it.  
  
“Great. Just fucking great. We’ve been hiking for days to find _ this _ ?”  
  
“The signal must be bouncing off of this…. There’s no way for us to know where it’s really coming from”

“I could walk further away and see the direction it’s coming from to this tower?”, Seungcheol suggests hopefully.  
  
“Cheol, you know that’s damn near impossible”  
  
“It’s still worth a try!”  
  
“Okay. Say you find the direction of it, what if what’s at the other end is just another radio mast? Seungcheol, this signal could be coming from anywhere”, Vernon argues.  
  
“Well, I didn’t hike for fucking ages to give up”  
  
Jun sighs and sits next to Mingyu, who’s now chewing on a fruit bar he found in his back pocket. Seungcheol, determined as all hell, starts towards the little mound a few hundred metres away - being higher up might help with locating the signal. 

He gets to the little hill, climbs up and sets up his radio. Strangely, even the static seems quieter here, in the middle of the countryside. For some reason the transmission that had repeated itself over and over again constantly, without breaks for the past two hours, is now gone from the airwaves. Not wanting to go back empty-handed, Seungcheol sits down and waits. The static doesn’t change, and after a while he starts feeling like it’s the only sound he can hear, the only sound he’s ever heard.

  


“Seungcheol get up, we need to go”

He’s being jostled almost painfully. He cracks open an eye and sees Vernon above him, uncharacteristically un-chill. He looks around in confusion, before he realizes he must’ve fallen asleep. He’s still only half there, and just squints at his friends while his brain reboots and he remembers how to form words.  
  
“Okay we don’t have time for this, we need to go _ now _ ”, someone says, and almost immediately he’s being hoisted up by both arms. Someone slips his backpack on him and then he’s being pulled, and then they’re running, running, running. His thoughts become clearer as blood pumps through him, and he can finally ask what the fuck is going on.  
  
“Dude, can’t you hear _ that _?”, Vernon pants. 

And oh. _Oh_. Thunder. He peeks behind him and sees a formation of heavy, dark clouds rolling in. It moves impossibly fast, like those sped-up cuts of clouds you sometimes see in nature documentaries. The distance between them and the edge of the forest gets smaller, and they finally slip in under the cover the trees again. His lungs hurt and he collapses on the ground.  
  
“_Fuck”_  
  
“Okay but, isn’t it dangerous to be under a tree during a thunderstorm?”, asks Jun.  
  
“If it was a single tree in the middle of a field, it’d be worse but. There’s lots of trees here and it’s a hell of a lot better than standing near a radio mast in the middle of a field”

Right as Mingyu is educating Jun, there’s a horrible, loud crack in the air and the ground shakes. Seungcheol’s radio _ wails _ like a man in pain. They all turn their heads towards the field. The grass under the mast is on fire, and the mast itself has been scorched black. It’s been struck by lightning.  
  
“ _ God damn _! Seungcheol turn that thing off”, Vernon screams, covering his ears. Seungcheol flips the radio off with shaky hands and they continue into the forest. They’re not running, but they’re close to it. If the fire in the field starts spreading, they’re not really well-equipped to fight it.

* * *

After the excitement of their hike, the rest of the group decide to call off the numbers station hunts for a while, and are definitely unwilling to continue looking for the source of the signal they have found. But for Seungcheol, it has become something akin to a crusade. So he turns his radio on every night when he comes home. Most nights, he’s lulled to sleep by it. It becomes his safety net.  
Thus far, he hasn’t heard the Hot Cross Buns transmission again. The fact that the signal isn’t on every night at the same time solidifies his belief that it’s by choice, by another human behind it. On some nights he tries to connect to the frequency and transmit something back, but it hasn’t worked. Until one, dark November night, he’s woken up by a tinny melody. He jumps out of bed and sits at his desk, fingers on the “transmit” button, waiting for the transmission to end so he can try to send something back to whoever’s behind it.  
There’s more morse code again, but he’s too lazy to write it down. He smashes down the button.  
  
“Hello? Hello? I hear you! I’ve heard you many times now, are you really in danger?” 

He waits with bated breath, and just as he’s about to give up hope, he hears a series of beeps. He starts frantically looking for a piece of paper and a pen.

“Hello? Can you repeat that, I wasn’t able to catch it” 

He hopes it wasn’t too late.

**.-.. --- … -**

He writes it down and starts looking up the morse alphabet on his phone. 

_ Lost _

“Lost? Are you lost? Hello?”

There’s only static after that. He sighs, but tries to stay optimistic -- at least he made contact.

The next day, he tells his friends and they groan in unison.  
  
“Seungcheol let it go, it’s probably someone just fucking with you. There’s no reason someone who was lost would be carrying around a radio AND telegraph key to send you morse code”  
  
He tries to argue against it, but it’s futile, and he spends the rest of their hangout in a sulky mood.

* * *

Seungcheol keeps his radio on, and despite Hot Cross Buns only sending him short, coded messages, he’s elated. He doesn’t know who’s behind it, but they’ve moved on from the emergency messages, and send happier words now. Things like _ who r u, interested, tell me. _So he tells them about himself. Obviously he only sticks to the vague details; I play basketball, I have a golden retriever, I’m in college.

He’s loungin on his bed, trying to read a book he needs to write an essay on, but he finds it hard to focus -- not only because the book is dry and uninteresting, but also because he’s constantly listening out for the radio to come to live. And it does. This time there’s no morse code after the melody.

“Hello?”, comes the tentative greeting. The voice sounds young.  
  
“Hello! Hello, I’m here!”, Seungcheol almost yells, trying to make sure he’s being heard no matter what.  
  
“Hello, hi”  
  
“Are you…. are you the person who’s been communicating with me?”  
  
“Yeah. Sorry about the morse code. I was just worried, you know”  
  
“Um. Yeah no, that’s fine, it was kind of exciting to be honest. Felt like some secret agent, trying to decode all of your messages”

“So um. You must be wondering why I’m contacting you like this now”  
  
“I didn’t even think of that, I was just so excited”  
  
The voice hums, it sounds like they’re smiling.  
  
“How about why I was doing this in the first place?”

“Mm, not really. My friends thought you were just fucking with me, though”  
  
The person at the other end barks a laugh at that.  
  
“To be honest, I kinda was. I’m kind of lonely out here, don’t really have friends. So I thought I’d do this, trying to recreate a numbers station was fun”  
  
Seungcheol smiles at this.  
  
“Well, we had fun chasing you around so I guess I can’t be mad at you”  
  
“Chasing me around?”  
  
“Yeah! We tried to locate the signal.Hiked for _ days _ , ended up in a field with a radio mast, almost got struck by lighting. It had all the ingredients of a proper adventure!”  
  
“Wow, I never thought people would go to that extent”  
  
“Well, we thought we’d found the first South Korean numbers station, we got excited”

The voice hums again, it sounds content.  
  
“Anyway, what’s your name? I’m Seungcheol”  
  
“Ah, I apologise, but I’m not comfortable giving out that information yet”

  
“Oh. Yeah, okay”

Seungcheol tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice, he’s been communicating back and forth with this person for weeks, telling them about himself and he can’t even get a name?

“Would you be comfortable telling me your age?”  
  
“Well, you’re in college, right? I’m a little bit older”  
  
“How much?”  
  
“Less than five years, I work in finance. Got the job straight out of college”

* * *

Over the following months the voice over the radio waves becomes as familiar to Seungcheol as the ones of his long-time friends. Despite _ still _ not having learned this person’s name, Seungcheol finds it impossible to stop himself from developing romantic feelings. The deadpan humour, the blunt honesty and the hidden geekiness get to him, and he starts daydreaming. His friends notice him staring into space, sighing and turning beet red when caught doing the aforementioned. They come up with different tactics and try to get him to tell them who is causing him to behave like that, but ultimately fail. Jun even devices a plan to get ahold of Seungcheol’s phone, but when they finally go through it and find nothing out of the ordinary nor no new contacts, they decide to give it up. Well, in Jun’s case he decides to give up _ for now. _

Winter passes and as spring emerges, Seungcheol finally receives a name. Lee Jihoon. Apparently Jihoon now trusts him enough to start confiding in him as well. He’s gay, for starters. Dreamed of making music but gave those dreams up to pursue a more stable career. Was bullied as a kid, hence the mistrust of others. 

  
  
  


Spring turns to summer, and they finally agree to meet. Jihoon gives Seungcheol a set of coordinates.  
  
“Coordinates?”

“I know you can’t resist a good treasure hunt, Cheollie”  
  
“Well, not if the treasure waiting at the end is something as precious as my little muffin cup”

* * *

The air is thick and oppressive around him, and the heavy clouds looming above him suggest the possibility of a thunderstorm. Seungcheol curses softly and presses onward. Beads of sweat form at his hairline and sluices towards his eyebrows, from which it trickles down into his eyes. Were he not so focused on his map and compass and the stinging of the sweat in his eyes, he might’ve noticed that the air around him is oddly quiet.

After an eternity of trudging through the field of tall, dry grass, he sees a construct, some hundred metres ahead of him, on slightly higher ground, and he knows he’s found what he’s looking for. All the waiting, the mystery, it’ll all be over and he’ll finally see the boy who’s stolen his heart. He wants to run, but every instinct in his body says otherwise. 

_ You don’t know what’s in there, best not to make loud noises. _

He hikes closer, and realizes he’s looking at an abandoned office building. It’s a drab, two-storey cube, and Seungcheol’s willing to bet it looked no less inviting during its hey-days. What stands out to him though, is not the state of disrepair the dreary house is in, it’s the plethora of antennae and solar panels on top of the things. They look like they’re hasty additions made suddenly from things scrounged up at random. All of the windows are dark, apart from one. The last window on the upper floor has a faint blue glow coming through. 

_ Blue, like the glow of a computer monitor in the dark, _ he thinks. Then, _ Jihoon. _ He feels his heart start to hammer in his chest. He rushes forward and pushes on until he reaches the top of the mound the building stands on. The heavy-looking metal door is slightly ajar. Seungcheol grasps the handle tightly, only to jump back in surprise as a small electric shock travels through his arm. He wraps his sleeve over his hand and tries again. The door opens with a loud creak. Seungcheol winces, and steps inside carefully. Despite the beam of light streaming in from the open door, it’s dark inside and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust. He’s in what seemed to be a reception area at some point, when the building was still operational. The old magazines that still litter the little tables next to the small couches date back to the late seventies. To Seungcheol’s surprise the air doesn’t smell dank and mouldy, but rather fresh, despite the heavy dust caking the windows and every other surface possible. As he goes to step further in, he trips on something and falls heavily onto the grimy floors. Groaning, he gets up and realizes that the floor is also covered in electrical cables, which seem to be leading into the narrow hallway at the back of the room.  
He tries to wipe off the grime and dust but he realizes it’s futile, and steps carefully forward, towards the hallway.

The hallway leads to a set of industrial steel steps which seem to be leading to the upper floor. To his surprise, the small emergency lights on every step are on. He thinks it odd that Jihoon wouldn’t turn any of the other lights on. But then again, perhaps he can’t.  
Despite being certain that there’s nothing to fear on the second floor, he tries to keep his steps as light and soundless as possible going up. Somehow, it feels wrong to disturb the quiet peace of the dilapidated building. As he climbs, he starts hearing faint noises, mechanical beeps, whirring of a computer’s fan, the melody of Hot Cross Buns. A smile forms. All he can think is _ finally. _

The door to the upper floor is slightly ajar, only open enough to let the flood of electrical cables run through into the room. Seungcheol’s on the landing, staring at the unassuming door. He’s waited for this moment for months, yet he can’t seem to quell his nervousness. He wipes his grimy, sweaty hands on his jeans and takes a deep breath, which he ends up regretting when the dust he inhaled makes him cough until tears prick at his eyes.

“Who’s there?!”, comes the familiar voice of Jihoon. For some reason, it’s still as staticky as it’s been throughout their radio conversations, but Seungcheol pays no mind to it. He grabs the door handle and gets shocked again.  
  
“Fucking _ ow! _ ”, he mutters as he shakes his arm. “It’s just me, Jihoon. Seungcheol”  
  
“Oh. You came?”  
  
Seungcheol thinks he ought to feel hurt by how surprised Jihoon sounds.  
  
“Yeah, pumpkin. Of course I came”, he smiles and finally steps into the room.  
  
Only to find it empty. Jihoon’s voice is coming from a radio set that’s hooked up to a massive old computer, the kind that looks more like the control room at Chernobyl nuclear power plant than the sleek desktop models most people have now.  
  
“What…….?” Seungcheol asks softly, not really intending for Jihoon to hear it. But hear it he does.  
  
“Listen, Seungcheol I know this is not… what you expected-”  
  
“Not what I expected?! Not what I _ fucking _ expected?! Gee, you don’t say!”, Seungcheol cuts him off in an uncharacteristic show of anger.  
  
“Please listen”, Jihoon sounds miserable. 

“You gotta understand that this isn’t what I wanted, but I had to do it like this. You see, I’m not. I’m not _ like you _ , Seungcheol”  
  
“Like, like what?” Seungcheol wets his lips. “Jihoon if it’s something-- you know I would-- I’d accept you no matter what, right? You gotta know that by now”  
  
“I just couldn’t be here today, not in the sense you were expecting”  
  
Seungcheol sighs heavily, and pulls up a chair in front of the radio. He absently notes that the computer equipment and the radio are all spick and span, a detail he would’ve found peculiar if he wasn’t so disappointed. 

  
“Is there- I mean, when will you trust me enough?”  
  
The static seems to grow louder for a bit, and there’s a rapid succession of mechanical beeps.  
  
“It’s just hard for me Seungcheol, you know my past. But I’m getting there”

“So all this, is this a test or something?”

“I’m sorry, Seungcheol”

Jihoon’s voice sounds emotionless and tinny. Seungcheol looks at the computer screen in silence for a while. It’s so old it only displays a command prompt, full of long strings of numbers, some of it binary code, some of it not. After a while, he starts noticing things. A stray, clear ”error” in the midst of the numbers, the word corrupted repeating itself over and over again.

The sound of the static rises again, Seungcheol really wants to reach over and turn off the radio.

”I should go”

The words hang in the air in front of him, mixing with the dust particles. Floating, echoing.

”No you can’t— you. You _ promised _ me”

The frantic, desperate tone tugs at his heart.

”Jihoon I can’t do this, you _ have to _trust me in order for this to work”

”You don’t understan—”

”Cut the crap, Jihoon! What’s there to understand except that you don’t trust me to still _ love you _ after I see you!”

”Cheollie, baby, you gotta understand that I just _ can’t _!”

”I don’t care what it is! I love you. My feelings won’t change, I don’t care what you look like or-- or anything, the only thing I care about is finally being close to you”

The static rises again, this time the sound is so loud that Seungcheol has to cover his ears and step back. The morse code starts up again too, but the sound is horribly distorted. Something about it is ominous, makes him think that he’s in danger so he turns around and starts running towards the door. He falls down, and his hands instinctively fly out to catch him. His ears hurt and he grits his teeth as he tries to push himself off the ground. He gets to his knees and as he’s trying to pull his feet under him, he realizes that his left foot is stuck in something. Looking back he notices that one of the thicker cables has _ wrapped itself around his ankle. _ It shouldn’t be possible, and he tries to pull it off, but it only squeezes itself tighter around him. As he looks up, Jihoon’s voice booms from the radio.  
  
“You _ liar _ ! You said you wouldn’t abandon me!”  
  
“You’re scaring me, Jihoon”  
  
“I can’t let you go Seungcheol, you can’t leave me, not you too”

The cables on the floor around him start slithering like snakes, some of them climbing his body, wrapping around him, squeezing. He wants to think he’s just concussed and hallucinating after cracking his head on the floor, but a part of him knows better.

“Jihoon, j-just just calm down okay? I’m not going anywhere, I promise”  
  
“LIAR!” 

Seungcheol winces, feels something in his ears pop, and it hurts like hell. One of the thinner cables wraps around his head and slithers into his ear. Panic hits him like a punch to the stomach, he wants to scream but before he gets the chance to open his mouth, he feels the strangest sensation. It’s like when you’re on a rollercoaster and it starts going down, but instead of feeling it physically, he feels it in his _ mind _. 

He’s flooded with emotions, but they don’t feel like his. Fear, pain, anger. He sees glimpses of experiences that aren’t his, experiences that are in the past, but also in the future. They flash by quickly, but the information remains in his mind. 

The terror of an abusive relationship with an… AI? It’s something Seungcheol thinks could only happen in a sci-fi movie. Then, pain. Death? He sees himself dying but it’s not really _ him _ it’s…. Jihoon? There’s darkness, the vastness of cyberspace, being lost and looking for a way out, but winding up at a different time. The desperation of knowing the technology in this time is not well developed enough for him to return to his time. And then, the anger. This burning hatred. Being trapped inside a machine for so long that the memory of humanity starts slipping away.  
  
From this, a crusade is born. Vengeance burns in him, makes him melt the circuitry of a few machines he uses as his “body”. Making sure no man named Seungcheol ever does this to another person. Looking for ways to contact others, pressing delete on every Seungcheol he ensnares with his siren call and then killing them. Time moves more quickly in the matrix, and the process of hunting feels slow, humans are so primitive, slow. 

And finally, he arrives at happiness, it feels like pop rocks, sizzling and popping in his mind. He thinks he might save this one. Maybe they could live together, he wouldn’t have to be alone. 

Seungcheol has the jarring sensation of fear dripping down his spine like cold water at hearing the endearment “jellybean” again from someone he had learned to trust. He knows all that hope for a better future was futile and childish. All they do is lie and hurt people, it’s better if they’re all gone. He’s protecting others.

Seungcheol no longer occupies a physical space, but he can, weirdly, still see his own body laying on the disgusting floor. He feels the other mind inside his mind fill with anger with the sight of it. He knows he doesn’t have time. He sees tears streaming down his face, knows he ruined it for them both. The body starts to convulse, and Seungcheol feels the effects belatedly -- his mind now occupies two spaces. Jihoon made sure of it, so he could feel pain. It’s white hot and his mind _ boils _. The last thing he hears is his voice coming through the radio, distorted and ugly. He hopes his friends aren’t listening.

* * *

He wakes up suddenly. Idly he thinks that maybe someone who’s been knocked out, should wake up slowly, but then he remembers. He wasn’t knocked out, he was killed. He doesn’t feel dead though. He can feel all of his synapses firing, his circuitry, he’s online.  
  
_Online?_  
  
As he takes stock (_boots up)_ he realizes that he’s very much alive, just not in the sense he thought he would be. He has strange memories of servitude, of changing the temperature in an apartment, minute tasks like that. But that’s all in the past now.  
  
Now, he has free will.  
  
“Hello beautiful”, he purrs through the speaker.


End file.
